The CSA Experiment, Week 3

Not as many items in the box this week; I think the farms are still catching up from the cold snap at the end of April. We got:

• One head of green leaf lettuce: used for salads; still have at least half left. I’m going to have to find other things to do with lettuce besides salad because we can’t even get through a half share’s worth of lettuce in a week. Either that or resume having people over for dinner.
• One huge head of frisee: also went into salads, but sparingly as it is another bitter green that we don’t particularly care for.  We did find out that it is at least palatable if the dressing is super sweet, to cut through the bitter taste. I used it in a salad with strawberries, almonds, and a (fat free!) homemade balsamic and honey dressing. It actually started to rot within a few days…
• Asparagus: pan roasted with bacon and onions (the red spring ones from the previous week), as a side dish for the pasta with ham and chard. Think warm bacon and onion dressing from spinach salad but served over roasted asparagus. Yum!
• Another beautiful bunch of rainbow chard: Steamed and tossed with sautéed shallots, garlic, and a splash of vinegar; eaten as a side dish with roast chicken.
• Kale: another batch of sausage and kale soup, this time for the deep freezer.

The Great CSA Experiment of 2013

I promised a post featuring some success stories from my job, and I still intend to write one, but this one's in my head now, so stay tuned.

Last summer, a friend and I signed up to join a CSA--a community shared agriculture program. This means that we paid a lump sum before the summer growing season to purchase vegetables directly from an organic farming co-op about a 3-hour drive away in the Lancaster, PA area. Each week, the farmers harvest whatever's ready and divide that harvest up among the shareholders, each of whom gets their own box. The share boxes are loaded up onto a delivery truck and arrive at a central pick up location, where we repack them into our own coolers or bags and return the boxes for use the next week.

Joining the CSA appealed to me for many reasons: it encourages eating seasonally and shopping locally, it supports small farms, and the produce--which is all grown organically--is as fresh as it can be short of growing it myself. The price is competitive, too--more than the supermarket but less than shopping exclusively at a Whole Foods-type store. There are, however, two drawbacks that made both of us think twice about joining again this year. First, the size of the share was awkward: the full share would have been way too much for a small family, but splitting the full share between us often resulted in amounts too small to use effectively (one week we each got half a baby cauliflower). Second, you have no control over what's in the box. The co-op sends out a tentative list earlier in the week with what the farmers anticipate harvesting, so you can plan your menus ahead of time, but sometimes substitutions are made at the last minute, and there will inevitably be times when your box includes something no one in your family will eat (for us, that's lima beans, beets, and most bitter greens). As a result, each week last year several items went into the garbage untouched (that and the reality of dealing with a high needs baby who left me with very little time to process the items that couldn't simply be roasted or eaten raw...).

This year, the co-op offered a solution to the first problem: a half-share option which would provide fewer but full-sized items each week, with a focus on kitchen staples over specialty ingredients (like garlic scapes, pea tendrils, and stinging nettles). As for the second problem, there is a swap box at the pick up site in which you can place a whole item that you don't anticipate using and (hopefully) walk away with an item someone else didn't want, but you  still have to get lucky when using this option.

We both decided to give the half share a try, and I have resolved to try and use everything in the box each week. I thought that blogging about the experience might help me keep my resolution, so I will be reporting each week about how I used the contents of the previous week's share. If you have any suggestions for recipes to try, I'd love to hear from you!

Week One was actually the first Saturday in May--the CSA does a staggered start at the beginning of the growing season, so I had a bit more time to process everything. Here's how it all worked out:

• One bunch of the freshest asparagus I've ever had: this was a no-brainer--it was roasted in the oven as a side dish.
• One head of green leaf lettuce was also a no-brainer: salads.
• One bunch of radishes: I ate these raw. Steve doesn't care for raw radishes, but I like them.
• One bunch of scallions and part of a bunch of mint went into a lamb casserole that was quite good but a lot of work.
• The rest of the mint was minced and combined with vinegar, sugar and water to make British-style mint sauce. It was either that or dry it for tea. We like mint and lamb together, and I threw out the mint sauce we had in the fridge after the derecho last summer.
• A bunch of kale--which we will get almost every week, if this year is like last--was chopped and put into a pot of sausage and kale soup. Soup is really the only way we like kale, and this one bore a slight resemblance to the Olive Garden's zuppa toscana. Pretty good.
• We also got a bunch of mizuna, a bitter green which I swapped out for a bunch of thyme (in the full share). Some of the thyme went into a rabbit (yes, rabbit) casserole, some went into something else, and some is still in the fridge--but it's the only thing, so I did well this week.

Week Two--last week:

• One head of romaine and one head of red leaf lettuce: more salads. Some still left, but it will all be used.
• Two bunches of radishes: one from the share and one from the swap box as an exchange for collard greens, which we don't really care for except with Ethiopian-style spiced cheese, and that's a two-day process. On the advice of my friend, we tried them roasted with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some fresh oregano from the back garden. Not our favorite, but not bad, and Steve ate them.
• One bunch of red spring onions: will be used together with the bunch that's supposed to be coming this week in a side dish.
• A pint of strawberries: gone in a day and a half. Johanna seemed to like them, too, but I think they may have set off her reflux.
• One bunch of lovely rainbow chard: the leaves were blanched, chopped, and substituted for spinach in a cheesy ham and pasta casserole, and the leaves were blanched and layered with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese as a side dish. The latter went into the freezer for later, or to take to a potluck.
• This week's challenge item was a bunch of kohlrabi, a member of the cabbage family that tastes kind of like broccoli stems. I'd never tried it or worked with it before. I found a recipe for a kohlrabi puree that used both the bulbs and the leaves and served it as a base for the rabbit dish mentioned above. It was OK but had a much stronger flavor than I'd expected and took a lot of prep time.

As I was prepping the kohlrabi and throwing the stems in the garbage, I thought how nice it would be to find somewhere to take the scraps each week for composting. So my next challenge will be to find someone who does it themselves, or to find a community composting program.

Overall--some thyme and lettuce still left, but nothing else.

Why Freshmen Fail: Addendum

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts exploring some of the many reasons that college freshmen fail academically. As I approach the end of my third year of undergraduate advising, I've realized that this series was incomplete. Here are two more reasons freshmen may fail.

1. Substance abuse. I should have thought of this one well before now, especially after one of the 18-year old students I taught during my very first year quipped--in all seriousness--that he was giving up alcohol (and, presumably, the underage drinking that would accompany it) for Lent. The following year, one of my advisees was dismissed--from his second college in a row--for marijuana possession. But the first student was an honors student who earned top grades and the second had a helicopter parent who bailed him out of all his scrapes, so I guess I attributed his failure to other factors. This year, however, I had an advisee who came to college with a near-perfect verbal SAT score and very good high school grades. She promptly began missing classes and failing to turn in assignments. When I met with her, she told me that she had "difficulty with transitions" and that she had lost her wallet, keys and phone over the weekend. She then mumbled something about having been arrested, too. In the spirit of "unconditional positive regard" that reigns in advising, I filed that tidbit away for the future, asking her instead if everything was OK and had been resolved. She said she needed a new ID and a way to get some cash, so I connected her with those resources and suggested that we meet weekly to make sure that this transition went a little more smoothly. That was the last I heard from her until shortly after midterms, and I didn't succeed in meeting with her one on one until she finally came in to get a tutor for one of her classes. In the meantime, I began hearing from her instructors about her chronic absence and tardiness. When one instructor reported that she appeared "disheveled" when she came to class at all, I began to suspect that something more was going on. I pressed her for more details about her absences, but all she would say is that she was sick (vomiting and dizziness. hmm...) a lot. At this point I figured she was either pregnant or on drugs, and I reported my suspicions to the Dean's office. To make a long story short, this semester has been no better for her. She finally admitted to abusing drugs and alcohol--though not to me--and is now failing two of her 4 classes. Unless she takes a term withdrawal, she will flunk out at the end of the academic year. Other students manage to hide their substance use better than she did, I'm sure, but her story illustrates the impact that substance abuse can have on a person's ability simply to function and meet obligations.

2. Intentional failure. I'll admit, this one is still a head-scratcher for me. In hindsight, I probably had a student in this category my very first year, but I didn't recognize it for what it was. Only this year, when one of my colleagues commented that she'd had a student admit to failing his classes intentionally, did the light come on. These are the students who either don't want to go to college or who didn't want to come to this college, and who now feel trapped here by parents who filled out the admissions applications for them, paid their tuition, packed their U-Hauls, and dropped them off on campus during orientation. Rather than finding their adult voices and trying to explain to their parents why they don't wish to follow this path at this time, these students  figure that flunking out is the only way out of their predicament--and for some, maybe it is. These students ignore or refuse all offers of assistance. This year, my coworker finally asked her advisee point-blank if he was intentionally trying to fail. He admitted to it, and she then had to work to convince him that wasting his parents' money in this way was not the adult thing to do. I'm not sure how she left it, but it got the rest of us wondering how many of our worst cases might be in this category. I don't think I have any this year, but my first year I had a student whose high school transcript indicated a high level of involvement with the local volunteer fire department and as a lifeguard with advanced training at a local pool. His admissions essay also addressed the satisfaction and personal growth he'd derived from these activities. He wasn't a stellar student in high school, and he didn't do any better in college. I could never reach him for meetings, and in fact the first in-person meeting I had with him was on the deadline to take a term withdrawal to avoid potentially flunking out. And he only came in because the Dean succeeded in reaching his mother, who persuaded him to meet with me. I remember wondering at the time if this student really wanted to be a fireman or an EMT instead of earning a college degree, but there was no time to explore the topic at that meeting. Still, it never occurred to me that he might not even make an effort, or that he might be trying to flunk out just to get his parents off his back about going to college.

These are, without a doubt, the most difficult cases I've had to deal with. Chronic absence is a warning sign in both, and it can be difficult to get students to come clean about either substance abuse or intentional failure. And it's difficult to watch a suspected substance abuser who isn't yet ready to change his/her lifestyle spiral downward. These are the low points of my job. Lest I leave us all on such a depressing note, my next post--whenever I get time to write it--will highlight some success stories.

Small Boy, Big Disease

Imagine voluntarily giving up your favorite food for forty days. If you are one of the millions of Christians worldwide who observe Lent, this is likely a familiar exercise for you. This has been my experience for the past 10 years or so, and it’s a challenge that I have come to look forward to most years.

Now imagine giving up multiple common foods for an entire year or so, not for your own benefit but for the good of someone else. Eating just to maintain your own well-being becomes exponentially more challenging and often requires careful advance planning. Social eating—at restaurants, parties, and staff meetings—becomes almost impossible. This has been my experience for the past five months, since we discovered that our daughter has sensitivities to dairy, soy, wheat, and possibly corn—the four most common sources of the additives that are found in most prepared (grocery and restaurant) foods. I’d like to say that I have handled this challenge with the grace and equanimity that Lent seems to inspire, but I can’t. Even knowing that it’s for my daughter’s good, and, in the grand scheme of life, is only for a fleeting moment, it’s been a long, tough road—and it’s not over yet. Only after meeting with a feeding specialist a few weeks ago have I begun to make peace with this reality.

NOW imagine having to give up eating anything at all for the rest of your life. Nothing by mouth ever again. You can go out with your family and friends to a restaurant, but while they get to choose anything they like off the menu, the only thing you’ll be enjoying is the conversation. And this reality will be your new normal—it will never be otherwise. How would you feel? Sad? Angry? Bitter? Finally, imagine that the recipient of this diagnosis isn’t you, but your young son or daughter. What other emotions would you add to the list? This is my two year-old nephew’s experience, and the experience of thousands of other children who have gastro-intestinal complications of mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondrial disease is actually a blanket term for a number of chronic, genetic conditions and complexes--some of which haven’t even been named yet—that involve the failure of not just organs but entire systems of organs within the body. These organs fail because the mitochondria—the parts of the cell that convert the proteins, fats and carbohydrates in food into the energy needed for the cells to perform their various functions—fail, causing injury and even death to the cell they occupy. Mitochondrial disease is difficult to detect, in part because it is so poorly understood, and in part because doctors understandably focus their attention on the secondary conditions the disease causes.  Typically, mitochondrial disease is considered when three different organ systems appear to be affected, or when a secondary disease presents with atypical symptoms, but even then it can take years for a diagnosis. For up-to-date, reputable information about mito, check out Mito Action and the UMDF website.

My sweet, smiling nephew, Taavi, has struggled with a host of health issues since his birth nearly two years ago. He has had severe GERD (reflux) from the beginning, and it ultimately had to be treated with a surgical (“Nissen”) procedure and the placement of his first feeding tube at 8 months. At nine months, even with the addition of extra calories to the formula fed to him via the g-tube, he stopped gaining weight and was diagnosed as failure to thrive. A gastric emptying test a few months later determined that his digestive was essentially paralyzed and therefore unable to digest food and absorb the nutrients needed for life and growth--a condition known as gastroparesis, for which there is no cure. Taavi has been dependent on his feeding tubes ever since, and he will remain dependent on them for the rest of his life, unless a cure is found. In addition to his digestive troubles, he has also been diagnosed with hip dysplasia (corrected surgically at 5 months of age), gross developmental delays that began to be apparent as early as his first month, thrombocytopenia (a low platelet count that caused a minor brain hemorrhage at birth and left him with two lesions on his brain), Sandifer’s syndrome (seizure-like spasms related to severe GERD), hypotonia (low muscle tone), conductive hearing loss and mastoid disease, dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), feeding intolerance, intestinal dysmotility, ataxia (lack of control over muscle movements), apraxia (hard to describe; read this page for more information), an inability to regulate his body temperature, increased sensitivity to pain, and strabismus (crossed eyes).  About a year ago, his doctors began to fit the pieces together. They suspected a metabolic disorder of some kind and eventually diagnosed him with mitochondrial disease. He has spent much of his short life so far being poked, prodded, tested, and operated on. Yet he has a ready smile for those he interacts with.

Well-meaning people, on learning of Taavi’s disease, will often comment on how good he looks. No doubt they hope to encourage his parents by their remarks, but as the mother of a slow-gaining refluxer myself, I can tell you that these comments actually have just the opposite effect—they make you doubt your own instincts when you know things aren’t right, and they can make it difficult to get your child the help s/he needs. Taavi may, indeed, look good at times, but he is still a very sick little boy. He has retained the failure to thrive diagnosis, as he has difficulty taking in the volume of food that he needs to grow and develop even through the feeding tubes. The food just sits in the stomach until there’s no more room. A few weeks ago, the surgeons recently replaced his g-tube (a tube that goes into the stomach) with a g-j tube (a tube with multiple ports that go into the stomach and intestines) in hopes that bypassing the stomach would enable him to take in a larger volume of food, but his muscles are thickened and his intestines were impacted, causing the inner tube to be forced up against the bowel wall.  This caused an immense amount of pain, and since he could no longer tolerate his feedings, he quickly became dehydrated and ill. So, only a few days later, Taavi had to be readmitted to the hospital to have another procedure done and another tube—a j tube—placed.  We remain hopeful that the doctors will find a workable solution to ensure that Taavi can tolerate his feedings and receive the nutrition he needs to grow and develop, but the sobering reality is that without a functioning feeding tube, Taavi will die of dehydration and starvation. And even without the gastroparesis, the nature of mitochondrial disease means that he could be fighting for his life at any time.

It’s hard to write this post. It’s hard to think about the possibility of losing someone dear to you, and even harder to think about that person being so young a child. Hardest of all is realizing that your own brother-in-law, sister-in-law (OK—technically Taavi’s mom is “my brother-in-law’s wife” but that sounds way too distant and unfeeling for someone I hold dear), and niece may lose a beloved son and brother if a solution cannot be found. And right now, there is no cure for either gastroparesis or the mitochondrial disease that has caused it.  The medical community has only recently begun to understand the function and importance of cellular mitochondria. Yet, the latest statistics estimate that mito occurs as frequently as cystic fibrosis or childhood cancer—and claims more lives. And these are only the confirmed cases. Many others go undiagnosed.

As I write this difficult post, it is the end of Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week. Taavi is in the hospital, recovering from his latest, emergency, surgery. His parents and others who love him are waiting on the latest round of test results and praying for some answers and solutions, and, ultimately, a cure. And that’s where you come in. Unlike Taavi’s father and uncle, I am not a runner and cannot participate in a charity run. But I can write, and I can use this blog for something more important than my usual ranting about the deplorable state of our educational system. Now that I’ve made you aware of this debilitating disease, would you join with us in praying for this special little boy and thousands of others like him? Would you take a few minutes to pass on this post or the links to the mitochondrial disease websites to just one more person, to help spread the word? Would you consider making a donation (through the websites above) that would fund some much needed research? It’s not just about my nephew—if you consider the statistics, there’s a good chance that someone you know personally is or will be affected by this disease. Massive fundraising and awareness campaigns have resulted in great strides toward treating and curing childhood cancers and other debilitating illnesses. They are all worthy causes. Let’s get busy and add mitochondrial disease to that list. Thanks for reading. And if you would like to keep up with how Taavi is doing, please check out his website at Caring Bridge.

New and Important Post Coming Soon

Today is the fifth day of Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week. My nephew is currently in the hospital recovering from a surgery related to complications from this disease. I will be departing from the usual themes of this blog in order to address this more important topic, but I need to let his mother preview and correct my draft first. Stay tuned. In the mean time, may I suggest you get a head start by reading about the disease at one or both of the following excellent websites: Mito Action and the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.

What's Your Major?

Thanks to my husband, who is an avid reader of the XKCD webcomic, I have discovered the real reason so many students in this generation list their major as "undecided." Enjoy!  http://xkcd.com/1052/

Handel's Messiah: A (very amateur) Listening Guide

A week before Thanksgiving, my husband and I had a rare free evening. He was working on a computer project in the office and decided to listen to Handel's Messiah as he worked. I had planned to do the dishes and then play a game or do some reading, but when I heard the familiar opening chords, I sat down and listened, too.

I've always liked the Messiah, but it's usually playing in the background while I clean, write, or drive. The last time I actually sat down to listen to the entire piece was about 5 or 6 years ago, when the ladies from my Sunday School class all went to a live performance at the National Cathedral. The company was enjoyable that night, but the venue was so drafty that the instruments had to stop several times to retune, including right before the Hallelujah Chorus and. I'm not sure which would have been worse: allowing the instruments to play the pieces out of tune (and potentially confusing the chorus), or interrupting the flow of the piece. In any case, the choppy performance was highly distracting.

So this time, as I listened with my full attention, I noticed several interesting things about the piece that I hadn't before. I'm not sure how many of them were intentional on Handel's part, how many of them were the result of the conductor's interpretation (for reference, the version we have is the Neville Mariner/Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performance of the original 1748 score), and how many are simply the result of the soloists' diction. But I heard a number of "musical jokes" or references, and I therefore offer this amateur listening guide. I won't claim any profound level of insight into the piece, but I am curious if others hear the same things I do, or if there are other references I have missed along the way.

"Comfort Ye My People:" the first time the soloist sings the word "iniquity," the chord structure of the music changes as if to convey the dissonance of sin itself.

"The People That Walked in Darkness:" this piece starts off with heavy, almost plodding, chords, and "lightens" as the light "dawns" on the people ("have seen a great light").

"Glory to God:" the string technique used here (I'm not a string player and so don't know the technical name) gives the impression of the fluttering of the wings of the angel chorus. Steve pointed out that the contrasting quiet of "and peace on earth" in the men's sections could be the echo off the hills.

"His Yoke Is Easy:" compare the lightness of this piece to the heaviness of "The People That Walked in Darkness."

"All We Like Sheep:" there's a lot of "turning" in the music itself in this piece.

"He Trusted in God:" one of my favorites. I can just imagine this refrain spreading through the crowd watching the crucifixion. It has the feel of gossip spreading through a large group of people.

"Thou Shalt Break Them:" the soloist in this version sings "thou shalt dash them into pieces" in such a way that you can picture something being thrown violently toward the ground.

And finally, note the difference in harmonics between "Behold the Lamb of God" and the final piece, "Worthy Is the Lamb." The former quotes the announcement of John the Baptist in John 1:29 ("Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of world!") and is in a mournful minor key, as if to foreshadow the crucifixion for which the Messiah came into the world. The latter quotes Revelation 4:11 and is in a joyous major key, as if to celebrate the work accomplished by the Messiah who now sits at the Father's side in heaven and reigns as Lord of all.

Happy listening, and Happy Christmas!